First year of new Ukrainian police is rather failure than success – expert

The first year of activities of the new Ukrainian police does not meet public expectations, does not correspond to the statements that were heard from the police leaders.

Borys Malyshev, the expert on the reform of law enforcement agencies group within the Reanimation Package of Reforms initiative, said this in a commentary to Radio Liberty on the occasion of one year of the enactment of the law on the National Police.

“In my opinion, a stage, which has occurred this year, is more a failure than a success. The launch of the patrol police from a scratch was the success. As for drawbacks, testing of police officers was carried out, but we may say it was not done properly, since only 7.7% of former staff was dismissed as a result of testing. Therefore, it does not meet the public expectations, does not correspond to the statements that were heard from the police leaders, the Interior Ministry, that testing should dramatically clean up the police from dishonest, dishonorable ,and unprofessional police officers,” Borys Malyshev said.

At the same time, he believes that we should not require eye-popping changes and expect that new police will become impeccable already after the first year of activity.

According to him, the reform is not a continuous process, it is divided into certain stages.

In addition, according to the expert, it is necessary to take disciplinary regulations of the National Police, which have been already registered in the Parliament. It is needed to impose sanctions in response to citizens’ complaints against police officers for disciplinary offenses, he said.

In turn, Chairman of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group Yevhen Zakharov claimed that a drawback of the police reform was absence of the institution of detectives and patrol police in the villages.

“Patrol police have been launched in 32 cities, but it still should be introduced in the rural areas and small towns where the majority of the population of Ukraine lives. Patrol police should be in a village. It is absolutely necessary,” Yevhen Zakharov said.

As a reminder, the law of Ukraine on the national police was enacted on November 7, 2015.